


The Fourth Day

by tinyfloatingwhale (thescienceofbeekeeping)



Series: Our Cousins, the Stars [3]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Second Person, Stream of Consciousness, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 04:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4551351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescienceofbeekeeping/pseuds/tinyfloatingwhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg is trying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fourth Day

It is noon, with no clouds in the sky. It is the fourth day.

 

There are splinters in your palms, and bitter salt on your tongue. The planks are heavy and unwieldy and hot in the sun, and you have spent more hours chasing gulls out of the cement molds than you have laying nails.

 

At least you have cement molds, you think. At least there are gulls.

 

Your hair is in your face. Grains of sand fly on the breeze and lodge between your molars. The tinny music rattling from your van speakers is faint and unintelligible and the wrong tempo for the work that needs to be done. The reek of low-tide hangs heavy in your mouth.

 

You want to stop.

 

You tug at one of the larger splinters with your teeth, until it pulls free and blood wells in its place. The skin of your face feels tight in the sun.

 

You keep going.

 

The waves crash, in their way; the urge to be taken up in the roil of the surf and tossed like a piece of ocean glass is strong. The beach is too bright, your lips too dry.

 

You smooth the cement. You saw the boards.

 

The van is at least twenty degrees hotter than the open air of the beach, but it offers shade and a place to sit. Sweat drips down your chin as you gulp stale water that seems near to boiling, but the gusts of breeze press the door against your knee in a steady rhythm and there are sandwiches in a cooler.

 

The urge to curl up and sob is overwhelming. You nearly rush to gulp down seawater to make yourself sick, but your guitar catches the corner of your eye and you realize that the peg for the A string is loose.

 

You tune it instead. Your fingers shake, but the chord is clear, now. You won’t think about it again until another peg slips.

 

It will happen. It always happens. But sometimes, it takes longer in between.

 

You heave a sigh, and to help blink back the tears you focus your attention on the cave. Its geode facets flash brilliant enough to blind, refracting the hues of the sea against itself. A few clouds begin to scuttle in above the surf, small and heavy with the promise of rain.

 

The raw boards surround it, make it ugly. You wonder why you’re making the effort at all.

 

But you know that it is necessary. It is the most important thing you have ever done.

 

Still, you feel dry and shrunken and halfway inside-out. You wonder how long it will be like this... if it will ever get any better.

 

The gulls scream as the wind whips up again.

 

From the cave, the baby cries.

 

Your feet sink deep in the sand, but you reach him before the wails get any louder. The cave is cooler than you realised, dark and shielded by the cliff above. Despite the chill radiating off the rock, the tiny body in your arms is warm and soft.

 

You bring his face close to your own. He's still wrinkly, still pink and fragile and so, so small. The facets of his gem press sharp through his onesie and into your arm, hard enough to leave an imprint. You tuck your pinkie against his mouth, smoothing the full mop of curls up off his forehead. He takes it, blinking away the last of the tears, and quiets.

 

Rose was so solid. You feel as if you would blow away as a cloud of dust if not for the steady heartbeat tucked against your own.

 

A heartbeat. She never had one, but this half of her does. You realize, in a distant way, that that’s your doing.

 

Heartbeats. Like the ocean. Fragile, in the hidden places. Gathering strength when surrounded by itself. Once set in motion, inexorable.

 

You're not a father; not yet. It's only the fourth day. But he stares up at you, eyes wide and inky black, and gives a toothless grin around your finger.

 

When you lay him down and go out again, a thunderstorm cracks purple and silver like a roiling bruise over the bay.

 

You feel it. It’s not as sharp as it was, like the lightning, but it echoes with the rumble of the thunder. You have a bruise in your chest as deep as the sky.

 

The boards are not as heavy as they were, as the first drops of rain begin to fall. By the time you begin hammering nails it is falling in sheets.

 

You glance up at the figure carved out of the cliff. Her arms outstretched, serene and stoic. A guardian. a protector. A mother.

 

The rain is coming down too hard to keep working. You drag tarps over the sawhorses, the cement. He coos as you sit cross-legged on the floor of the cave, plucking out a lullaby.

 

“This is where your room will be,” you say, and he smiles.


End file.
